The ISI Exposed

On September 30, 2006, the Mumbai Police disclosed that the Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, conceived theserial bomb blasts that killed nearly 200 people and injured over 700 in Mumbaion July 11, 2006. It was executed through the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), with local assistance from the Students IslamicMovement of India (SIMI), the Police Commissioner of Mumbai, A.N. Roy, told themedia.

Roy stated that 15 persons had been arrested in connection with this case, ofwhom 12 were directly involved in the blasts. He said the investigators were yetto find concrete evidence against the remaining three, who could be released, iffound innocent. A top LeT cadre, Azam Cheema, who reportedly runs a trainingcamp at Bahawalpur in Pakistan, has been identified as the principal conspiratorby the Mumbai Police. Many of those arrested had received training in the use ofarms and explosives at Bahawalpur on more than one occasion, Roy added.

Cheema's three planners in India were the Lashkar’s western India commanderFaizal Sheikh, a resident of Mira Road near Mumbai, Kamaluddin Ansari, who wasarrested from his home in the Madhubani District of Bihar, and Ehtesham Siddiqui,a publisher of Islamic literature and Maharashtra secretary of the SIMI. Thethree are among those arrested. Seven teams of two militants each—onePakistani and one Indian—were formed to plant seven bombs on an equal numberof trains. Police have arrested four of the Indians, but three are still atlarge. All but one of the Pakistanis escaped and it is believed that he possiblyfailed to disembark from the over-crowded train compartment, and died in theblast at the Khar station. His mutilated body remains unclaimed. CommissionerRoy said that the Police had the face reconstructed and conducted DNA tests onthe body; further, narco-analysis tests on one of the arrested persons confirmedthat it was the body of Salim, a resident of Lahore in Pakistan.

Roy said 11 Pakistani militants in three groups had reached India in March2006 via three different routes—from Nepal in the North, Bangladesh in theEast and from across the Gujarat border with Pakistan in the West. Ansarismuggled in two Pakistanis through Nepal; Abdul Majid, a resident of Kolkata inWest Bengal, smuggled in five from Bangladesh, while four were brought in by anunnamed collaborator from the Gujarat border. One Pakistani, Mohammed Ali aliasAbu Osama, died in an encounter with the police at Antop Hill in Mumbai onAugust 22. The remaining nine of the 11 escaped and may have left the country.One of the Pakistanis, Ahsannullah, is suspected to have brought 15 to 20kilograms of RDX, the main explosive used in the bombs, while the othermaterial, ammonium nitrate and nitrite, as well as the pressure cookers in whichthe explosives were packed, were procured locally.

Bahawalpur in the Punjab province, incidentally, serves as the headquartersof the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The LeT has also maintained a presence in Bahawalpur.This was revealed after a LeT module was neutralised in Mumbai in July 2006. Themodule was preparing to bomb the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India’spremier nuclear research and fissile material-producing complex.

The latest revelations come at a time when the ISI, Pakistan’s externalintelligence agency, is reeling under the impact of the British and Afghanallegations that the agency was covertly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.During his recent visit to the United States of America, President PervezMusharraf was forced to defend the ISI in the wake of rising allegations ofsustained wrongdoing by the agency.

The Mumbai disclosure also come a few weeks after India and Pakistan agreedto resume the peace process, which had stalled in the immediate aftermath of7/11. The fate of the ‘joint mechanism’ on counter-terrorism, announcedafter the September 16 meeting between General Musharraf and the Indian PrimeMinister Dr. Manmohan Singh in Havana, appears to be in serious jeopardy. In animmediate response to the Mumbai revelations, Pakistan’s foreign ministryspokesperson Tasnim Aslam declared, "It is baseless, it is irresponsible and(done) out of habit." Pakistan’s Minister of State for Information, TariqAzim Khan, describing it as India’s knee-jerk reaction in blaming Pakistan formilitant acts, added, "India has always chosen this path of pointing a fingerat Pakistan without evidence… If they have any evidence, they should provideit to us and we will carry out our investigations." Khan’s offer to ‘carryout investigations’ is not new. However, this time Islamabad would have toprovide more than the usual line of ‘investigations not proving India’sclaims.’

The institutional mechanism, whose parameters remain entirely unclear, willcertainly question Pakistan’s commitment (January 6, 2004) not to allowterritory under its control to be used for terrorism against India. Moreimportantly, it will also severely challenge the efficacy of such aninstitutional mechanism. Taking charge as India’s Foreign Secretary on October1, 2006, Shiv Shankar Menon stated in New Delhi that India will give evidence toPakistan and "judge it by its actions and not words." Menon questionedhow Pakistan can deny the involvement of ISI and Pakistan-based terrorist groupswithout looking at the evidence. For all its criticism, the joint mechanism, inthe context of the latest disclosure, could be a decisive opportunity for NewDelhi to call Pakistan’s bluff.

While allegations of supporting terrorist networks are not new to the ISI, itis the cumulative impact of the recent Western and (for much longer) Indianreports that is causing concern for the Agency. While its network and strategyof promoting militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, and of seeking ‘strategic depth’in Afghanistan, are well-known in this part of the globe, the West has, for ahost of reasons, not recognized the diabolic nature and intent of the Agency.However, the West is now finding it increasingly difficult to ignore thefootprints of ISI terror across the world.

A report commissioned by Britain's Ministry of Defense is reported to haveconcluded that the ISI "has been supporting terrorism and extremism, whetherin London… or in Afghanistan or Iraq." "The [Pakistani] Army’s dual rolein combating terrorism and at the same time promoting the MMA [MuttahidaMajlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Islamist parties], and so indirectly supportingthe Taliban through the ISI, is coming under closer and closer internationalscrutiny," said the British Defence Academy report. It also noted: "IndirectlyPakistan, through the ISI, has been supporting terrorism and extremism whetherin London on 7/7 or in Afghanistan or Iraq." The Report recommended, moreover,that it was necessary to dismantle the ISI if the problem of Pakistan’ssupport to Islamist terrorism was to be resolved.

In September 2006, a British Pakistani facing trial for allegedly plotting toblow up the Houses of Parliament and other high-profile targets in Britain,reportedly refused to give further evidence claiming that he feared for thesafety of his family in Pakistan, who had been contacted by the ISI after histestimony at Old Bailey. 24-year old Omar Khyam, who was to continue histestimony about his activities in Pakistan in 2000, told the Court: "Beforewe go on to that topic, I just want to say the ISI in Pakistan has had wordswith my family relating to what I have been saying about them… I think theyare worried I might reveal more about them, so right now, as much as I want toclarify matters, the priority for me has to be the safety of my family so I amgoing to stop... I am not going to discuss anything related to the ISI any more,or the evidence."

Even as the British Government distanced itself from the report saying theviews were not its own, the much harassed General Musharraf warned the West,"You will be brought down to your knees if Pakistan does not cooperate withyou… Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you would not manageanything. Let that be clear. Remember my words, if ISI is not with you andPakistan is not with you, you will lose in Afghanistan."

Pakistan and its leader have, evidently, mastered the art of intimidation andblackmail, and have extracted a generous price, through threats and cajoling,from the West for their purported ‘cooperation’ in the ‘global war againstterrorism’, even as they have diverted a proportion of this largesse tocontinuing their support and sponsorship of Islamist terrorism. It remains to beseen whether the world has the capacity to recognize Pakistan’s persistentperfidy, and to evolve a workable strategy to neutralize it

Kanchan Lakshman is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management;Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution. Courtesy,the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal